Sunday, April 24, 2011

Michael Caine is a therapist, Angie Dickinson is one of his clients, Dennis Franz is a sleazy cop and Nancy Allen is the call girl who is witness to a murder. Directed by Brian De Palma.

Ah, they don't make movies like this anymore... Over thirty years old, it's still quite a powerful film. De Palma is riffing on Hitchcock, especially Vertigo and Psycho (including the psychiatrist who explains everything in the end). It has some great set pieces: the museum scene, the elevator scene and the subway scene (later improved upon in Carlito's way). De Palma could possibly be criticized for also copying himself; the opening and ending of the film is very similar to Carrie. The first shower scene (yes, there are two!) must have given him the idea to his later film Body Double.

Caine and Dickinson are good in their roles, but the film really belongs to Nancy Allen, very appealing as the witness. Franz is a lot of fun as the cop. De Palma originally wanted Liv Ullmann in the Dickinson role, but she turned it down. Too bad, since Ullmann in a De Palma film really would have been something, and it's probably too late now...

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Michael Caine and Steve Martin are a couple of con men on the French Riviera. Also starring Glenne Headly, directed by Frank Oz.

Michael Caine lost a lot of credibility in the eighties for doing all kinds of crap movies, but between the films taken for the paycheck he did some good work, like this film. It has a classy direction by Oz and a good script. Both Caine and Martin are very good. The film is possibly a bit off balance, the way the early scenes with Martin as the idiot brother, «not mother?», are really funny, and then the rest of the film doesn't quite reach those same heights. Also, a little nitpick: They couldn't find a French actor for the Inspector role, instead getting an English actor who's faking a French accent?

Friday, April 22, 2011

A slightly more realistic James Bond, Michael Caine is Harry Palmer, ladies' man, gourmet cook, classical music lover and arrogant and insolent secret agent. Plus he wears glasses! It's one of those films that starts with a scientist being kidnapped (always a good start!), and it's up to Caine to get him back. Directed by Sidney J. Furie.

It's a great film that has not dated. Visually, the film is very inventive. The camera is often put in the lower, crooked angles that Orson Welles liked to use in Citizen Kane, looking up at the characters, the wide screen images are carefully composed. Particularly, there's a fight scene on a set of stairs, seen through a red phonebooth that is amazing. The producer of the film, Harry Saltzman, really should have kneeled down and kissed the feet of the director. But did he? No, he hated the look of the film and barred the director from the editing room. There were two sequels made the two next years, that I'd like to see, but I doubt they will be quite as good as this film.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

A game of cat and mouse between rich crime writer Laurence Olivier and hairdresser Michael Caine who's having an affair with Olivier's wife. Based on Anthony Shaffer's play, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

I was disappointed by this film. It has some of the same problems as Wait Until Dark, that all the dressing up and theatrical shenanigans might work well on stage but less so on the screen. There's a certain cleverness, but the film lasting more than two hours, it just got a bit silly and tiresome in the end. It's just hard to believe in the characters and care about what happens to them. Also, the identity of the police inspector was not that difficult to guess.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

A bit surprised by how much I enjoy this series, particularly how unironic it is. Beautiful drawings, of course.

Killshot by Elmore Leonard

Satisfyingly unpredictible, but maybe not Leonard's best book.

The Mayor of MacDougal Street by Dave Van Ronk

A very funny and wellwritten memoir about Greenwich Village and the folk revival in the 60s. I didn't really know that much about his music, but his name always pops up in Bob Dylan books; he was also one of the faces in No Direction Home, the Scorsese film.

Jack Kerouac, Selected Letters: 1940-1956

Very interesting to read. This is only the first half of his letters, but already you can see the rise and fall of his friendship with Neal Cassady, from writing long confessional letters to towards the end of the book going «why don't you write me anymore?» There's helpful biographical text by editor Ann Charters between the letters, putting them in a context.

Jack Kerouac - King of the Beats by Barry Miles

An interesting biography. It doesn't paint a pretty picture of Kerouac, though, the way he and his mother treated his wives as maids and the way he ignored his daughter. Also, of course, the almost incestuous relationship he had with his mother. So, okay, the guy wasn't perfect. Reading biographies about artists you admire, you find out very few of them are.

Buz Sawyer, vol. 1 by Roy Crane

Less fun than the Captain Easy Sundays book, the whole spirit of adventure sort of missing. Only looking at the drawings, I find them more appealing than the ones by Milton Caniff, but Caniff wrote better stories and characters. However, I thought Terry and the Pirates also got less interesting during the war years. It's a bit annoying how the quality of the images gets worse in the second half of the book. Shame on you, Fantagraphics!

Currently reading:

Jack Kerouac, selected letters 1957-1969.

His days on the road mostly over, and an alcoholic by now, he for the most part stayed at home with his mother. Writing letters about going to Japan or Europe, but then not doing anything.

On my bedside table, waiting to be read:

Off the Road by Carolyn Cassady, The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, Touch by Elmore Leonard, Chronicles by Bob Dylan

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Monday, April 18, 2011

Got some new Michael Caine films and will re-watch some other ones. First: Gambit. Caine gets help from Shirley MacLaine to steal a priceless statue from Herbert Lom. Directed by Ronald Neame.

It's one of those romantic heist films from the sixties. I found it to be better than Topkapi or The Thomas Crown Affair. Made in 66, it still has a stylish and timeless feel. If it had been made just two or three years later, it would probably have looked more dated today. Seen with modern eyes it might be a bit slow, but the actual heist part towards the end is genuinly exciting and unpredictable. I had a hard time guessing how it would end. Caine is cool as a cucumber and MacLaine does her kooky thing. That they have fallen for each other by the end is maybe the one thing in the film that doesn't feel earned.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Rebecca Romijn-Stamos participates in a diamond heist, then coublecrosses her partners. Also starring Antonio Banderas, directed by Brian De Palma.

Okay, this is not one of De Palma's very best films, but it's the one where I felt I finally understood De Palma, it's the one that made me a fan. Previously I had mostly liked his more commercial films, like The Untouchables and Mission Impossible. This film has some ridiculous dialogue, big coincidences and logically the heist makes no sense at all. The whole heist is based on Romijn-Stamos being able to seduce the girl with the diamonds. But VISUALLY it makes sense! The heist sequence with the Bolero influenced music is hypnotic, it's pure film and pure De Palma. I love the part with the cat! I'd say the best sequences in the film are those with no dialogue. As soon as one of the characters open his mouth you sort of want to push fast forward.

Another great sequence is the one with the wedding photographer waiting for the sun to re-appear and the gangsters wearing suits trying to catch the diamond girl wearing boots and some sort of army look hotpants, only showing their legs running, in slow motion. Apparently the film was made with European money. After the heist, there is a long sequence where you at first have no idea what's going on, with Romijn-Stamos turning out to be the double of a French girl. 15 minutes pass before you start figuring it out. I'm not sure an American studio would have allowed such a long sequence like that where you could end up losing the audience. There's also, not to give too much away, a big part of the film that might be seen as a cheat, but that I found to be completely fitting for the noir universe of the film.

Anyway, this film made me go find his older films, and even the lesser ones, like Raising Cain and Snake Eyes will have one or two of those brilliant sequences or set pieces that make them worth seeing, showing De Palma to be the master of visual storytelling.

Friday, April 8, 2011

The sequel to Before Sunrise, made nine years earlier where Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy spend a day in Wienna and promise to meet again in six months. Directed by Richard Linklater.

So, they meet again in Paris, nine years older and with some lines on their faces. The story is told in real time and since Hawke has a plane to catch, the clock is ticking for how long they have together. Slowly they get closer to telling the truth about the dreams and disappointments in their lives. It's like a romantic comedy version of My Dinner With André, with a satisfyingly open ending. Ethan Hawke will always be Oh, Captain, my Captain! for me, so it's strange to see him getting older, and Julie Delpy is still cute. I wouldn't mind too much if they make a third one.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

After some uneven films Wes Anderson triumphed with this stop motion animation film based on Roald Dahl's book. It has a very appealing handmade feel, and avoiding blues and greens, mostly sticking to earth colours, it looks amazing. Anderson keeps the visual style from his previous films, the centered images, and there's also the 70s soundtrack and the son with daddy issues. Not sure how much a kid will get from all this, but it's a great film, and I loved that strange and touching scene towards the end with the wolf.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

A surreal masterpiece by Swedish director Roy Andersson, this is a film that should be seen in the cinema. It loses some of its power on my little tv. All the images are carefully composed in muted colours and filmed with a static camera. Each scene is one long take, looking like a painting that has come to life. The dialogue is anti arty, though, if that's a word, very much normal, every day talk.

What's the film about? Well, it came out in 2000 and is pretty much a millennium film. The world is going to hell, there's chaos everywhere, and we follow a group of people who try to do the best they can with the situation. Among them is the businessman whose furniture store burned down and his two sons, one a taxi driver, the other a poet in a mental institution. At the same time, the politicians decide to sacrifize the life of a little girl. Did I mention that it's also funny, in a Scandinavian, long dark winters kind of way?

Scenes from the film can be found on youtube, among them the amazing six minutes long one take ending, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s-e799o37w

Monday, April 4, 2011

Apparently some good films have been made the last ten years. Like Timecrimes, a Spanish film where a man in the countryside sees a naked woman in the woods through his binoculars. He goes to investigate and is attacked by a man whose face is covered by bandages. Then he travels back in time. Directed by Nacho Vigalondo.

Timetravel films are fun, no? They're hard to screw up. This one starts out creepy, then gets strange, then stranger and then funny. How far can you go with the paradoxes that always appear in these films? Well, in this film pretty far, with the main character in usual fashion going back in time to correct what he did wrong the first time he went back in time. It's very inventive, even though I seem to remember a short story by Isaac Azimov that had some of the same premises, and I can only assume an American remake is in the works where they have some hunk instead of a bald, fat middleaged guy in the main role and lose all the charm of the original.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Friday, April 1, 2011

Two Finns, one loves coffee, the other vodka, go on a car trip and on the way pick up two women, one Russian, the other Estonian.

Great title! It's a Kaurismäki road movie, a funny but strange film, that might be his most poetic one. It's also short, lasting less than an hour, and in black and white. There's a sequence of the two men in the car, with one of them, Matti Pellonpää, having a long monologue. It's very unusual in a Kaurismäki film, but it turns out it's only there to set up the men's complete silence and shyness around the two women, not even being able to look in their eyes.

I see on IMDB that Kaurismäki got a new film coming later this year called Le Havre starring Jean-Pierre Léaud and Kati Outinen, so that's something to look forward to. There is also this great quote by the man himself: "Cinema is dead. It died 1962, I think it was in October."